As America continues it’s struggles with obesity more and more people are looking for healthy alternatives in their diets.  Folks are monitoring their caloric intake, their carbs and fats too.  One of the places that many are trying to “health out” is in the bakery.  As a nation we are finally learning the benefits of whole grains.

According to the good folks at the Mayo Clinic:

All types of grains are good sources of complex carbohydrates, various vitamins and minerals, and are naturally low in fat. But grains that haven’t been refined — called whole grains — are even better for you. Whole grains are better sources of fiber and other important nutrients, such as selenium, potassium and magnesium. So whenever you can, choose whole grains over refined grains.

The nation’s major bakers have responded with a plethora of healthy bread alternatives including whole grains, fewer chemicals and more organic ingredients.  Nature’s Own, Arnold’s and Nature’s Pride all are companies specializing in bread that is better for you.  Some of the larger baking companies like Wonder, Bunny and Sunbeam have tried to provide healthier if not actually healthy alternatives to their established products.

Then there’s Sara Lee.  Most have grown up thinking of Sara Lee as high quality, wholesome foods but that may not be the case.  First off, Sara Lee is not a bakery or a food service company.  To quote their own website, “At Sara Lee Corporation, our business is brands.”  Brands?  It isn’t food?  Hmm.

If memory serves, isn’t Sara Lee the only bread company, sorry brand company, to ever have to recall it’s bread because of metal shavings?  But that was just an accident and accident happen right?  It wasn’t an accident.  Accidents are unpreventable.  Mistakes, however, are born from ineptitude and that was one doozy of a mistake.

Let’s take a look at Sara Lee Heart Healthy Plus 100% Whole Wheat Bread and compare it to another popular healthy bread the 100% Whole Wheat from Nature’s Own.  According to the nutritional label on Sara Lee’s Whole Wheat each slice contains 80 calories (10 from fat), 1 gram of fat (0 grams of saturated fat but there is no listing of trans fat), 135 mg of sodium, 14 grams of total carbs (4 grams dietary fiber, 3 grams of sugar) and 4 grams of protein.

That’s not bad but compare it to the Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat bread which contains 50 calories (10 from fat), 1 gram of fat (0 saturated fats, 0 trans fats), 115 mg of sodium, 10 grams of total carbs (2 grams dietary fiber and 1 gram of sugar) and 4 grams of protein. That’s even better.

Still compared to normal bread the Sara Lee is pretty good right?  Maybe not.  You see for years Sara Lee bread has been made with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and hydrogenated oils.  It seems everyday there are new findings about the ill effects of HFCS which has proven to be far worse for your body than even table sugar including increased occurrence of pancreatic cancer which leads to diabetes and heart disease.  It also wreaks havoc on the liver.

Hydrogenated oils are the very trans fats that you keep hearing about.  Trans fats, studies have shown, greatly increase your chances of heart disease and stroke by elevating the LDL (bad cholesterol) while lowering HDL (good cholesterol) .  But wait, the name of the Sara Lee bread is “Heart Healthy.”

You see nothing is healthy if it contains HFCS or hydrogenated oils.  The body simply cannot process them.  It doesn’t matter how little of each is in the food because no amount is tolerable.  Despite what the hucksters at Sweet Surprise fraudulently assert in their clever commercials, high fructose corn syrup has been proven to be more harmful to you than standard sugar.

Even Sara Lee knows this and that is why on August 16th they sent out a press release announcing their transition from HFCS to safer ingredients in their Sara Lee Soft & Smooth line.  The release said nothing about eliminating it from the Heart Healthy products.  So when you out shopping and you see those loaves of Sara Lee grab one and check to see if it’s one of the new formula breads.

However, Sara Lee has yet to say anything about eliminating hydrogenated oils from their allegedly healthy breads saying in another document that they admit that hydrogenated oils are trans fats and that trans fats are unhealthy.  The most they have committed to is trying to decrease the amount of hydrogenated oils they use.

The moral of this story is don’t trust the label on the front; scrutinize the one on the back.

I guess it could be said that my hometown (Mobile, AL) is the epicenter of football.  We have our hometown South Alabama Jaguars starting their second season of NCAA play.  An hour or so away is the University of Southern Mississippi.  Two hours away is New Orleans home of the Super Bowl Champion Saints of the NFL.  Mobile also is roughly four hours from LSU, Alabama and Auburn.   All three are power houses from the nation’s toughest conference, the SEC.

Suffice it to say, we love our football here.  We also love great food so football season is also the height of our party season.  But football parties are not solely the domain of Mobile or the state of Alabama or even the South.  Starting this weekend football fans across the nation will be breaking out their best recipes to impress their guests and more importantly those who dare to wear the colors of the other team.

In the current issue of Southern Tailgater Magazine I have an article entitled Top 10 Tailgating Trends for 2010.  In the course of writing that article I chatted with Carrie Oliver of the Artisan Beef Institute where she offered burgers made from dry aged beef as a coming trend.  Unfortunately the constraints of the article kept me from using all of the information Carrie gave me.  With football season here I thought it a good time to share with you the rest of her expertise on the subject of grilling, trends and artisan beef.

According to Carrie, fancy condiments are out, dry-aged beef burgers are in.  Or as she puts it, “Bland is out, flavor is in.  Because when you use top quality beef that’s been dry-aged before you grind it, the burgers themselves have flavor. You won’t even need to use condiments.”

I hope this plays out better than it sounds.  From CBS:

Remy Gonzalez, “Cake Boss” Brother-in-Law, Charged with Sexually Assaulting Jersey Teen.

NEW YORK (CBS) Remy Gonzalez, brother-in-law of Buddy Valastro of the TLC reality show “Cake Boss,” has been arrested for sexually assaulting a minor, according to a report.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that Gonzalez was charged with first- and third-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree sex assault, third-degree endangering and fourth-degree criminal-sexual contact.

According to an arrest affidavit obtained by the paper, Gonzalez was arrested on Aug. 17 and after detectives met with two witnesses who claim Gonzalez admitted to them committing multiple assaults on the teen.

READ THE REST

Each week as part of my duties with TheKitchenHotline.com I plan a full menu of meals that feed a family of four for an entire week. Each day’s menu feeds the family three meals plus a snack for the kiddies. These recipes need to be relatively easy to allow more quality time for the family to spend together. Another part of my charge is to come up with healthy recipes. Each week I will share one of these recipes with you. Here’s this week’s:

Mexican Jumping Wings

Great for watching the big game!

• 3 dozen chicken drumettes
• 1/2 cup Cholula or other Mexican hot sauce
• 1/2 cup smart margarine
• 1 cup Low Fat Ranch dressing (recipe follows)
• Crudites of carrots and celery

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place the drumettes into a lightly oiled baking sheet pan and bake for 45 to 60 minutes. In a small sauce pan over low heat combine the hot sauce and margarine and keep warm until drumettes are done. Toss the drumettes in the wing sauce and serve with Ranch dressing. Can be made dairy-free by omitting the Ranch dressing. Makes two servings with each consisting of 300 calories, 14 grams fat, 5 grams of carbohydrates and 38 of protein.

Low Fat Ranch Dressing

• 1 cup organic low fat Greek or regular plain yogurt
• Juice and zest of one Key lime or half regular lime
• 1 teaspoon dried chili powder (ancho for mild, chipotle for spicy)
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon fresh jalapeno, finely diced

Combine all dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse just until blended then refrigerate at least one hour.

There are food better jobs than being a food writer.  It’s one of the few jobs that even when it doesn’t pay much you don’t have to worry about starving.  Few people know this better than blogger Hagan Blount.

Blount is the writer of one of the most food-centric blogs in history, the Wandering Foodie.  At WF Hagan has made milking your blog for a great meal into an art form.  Hagan doesn’t just go to restaurants and blog the meal, Hagan goes to the best restaurants to blog the meal.  Never one to do things halfway, he has devised eating excursions that he calls “projects” but in reality they are full blown glutenous food marathons.  You have to love him.

Take for instance the one he called Restaurant Madness.  Blount go together with other notable Big Apple food bloggers Joe DiStefano (World’s Fare), Lawrence Weibman (NYC Food Guy), Gabrielle Langholtz (Edible Brooklyn) and Andy Freedman of Wined and Dined.  They divided 64 NYC restaurants into a bracket and doled them out tournament style to determine the title of the crowd’s favorite.

Another one of the Wandering Foodie’s projects was called 93 Plates.  Beginning last January and lasting thirty-one days straight he ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at NYC’s best restaurants.  He was joined by the city’s most influential food writers, blogging their every bite.  That’s three meals a day at a famous NYC restaurant until he had consumed 93 plates.  Other projects include 24 in 24: DC and 24 in 24: Boston tours of each cities’ food scene where he hit 24 eateries in 24 hours.

Hagan Blount was kind enough to take on my “project” called 7 Questions:

1. How old were you when you first started to write?

I was published by my local paper in third grade. It was a limerick contest. I don’t remember the poem exactly, but it was pretty weak. The rest of the applicants must have been pretty damn terrible.

2. Most people’s “bucket list” involves going to foreign countries and seeing world wonders; yours includes deep dish pizza and roast duck. What’s that all about?

I’m all about new experiences. I’ve been to something like 24 countries and counting, and I love travel, but travel is expensive. My theory about food is that (aside from reading) it’s the least expensive way to have an interesting new experience every day. There’s nothing else like it. I respect where food comes from, how flavors come together, the history of certain dishes … Think of how many ingredients go into making a curry paste and it boggles the mind how much trial and error went into this creation, yet in 3,000 years of work, it’s been perfected.

3. I know you are a New Yorker but can you separate yourself from the Chicago/New York rivalry long enough to weigh in on who has the best pizza?

I’m a Red Sox fan so I have no problem separating myself from any NY centric rivalry. I just moved here in December, and I’m still getting acclimated. I didn’t get to go to Lou Malnati’s when I was in Chicago, so people say I didn’t get the full experience. I did go to Uno’s, Gino’s, and Pequod’s though, so I think I got the full experience. New York Pizza is better, hands down. The one thing I think NYC could learn from Chicago is to incorporate Jardiniere into more pizza. Di Fara Pizza in Brooklyn offers something like it as a side, and it should not be missed.

4. Of your marathon eating adventures that you like to call “projects” which was your favorite?

93 Plates for sure. Wouldn’t you like to eat out every meal for a month at some of the best places to eat in the greatest foodie city in the world for free? Of course you would.

5. You’ve had eating projects in Washington DC, Boston and New York City; when are you coming to the South?

Right after I finish the Pacific Northwest. I’m eager to get out to San Fran and Portland sometime in the next few years. Where would I go in the south? It’s so spread out down there, I would need my old RV back!

6. On your “93 Plates” project you ate 93 meals at New York’s best restaurants in 31 days. A total of 51 other food bloggers (yes I counted – twice) joined you; was there one experience that stands out?

Spending the day with Baron Ambrosia in the Bronx. This guy is a trip. For breakfast, I had pig ears at 188 Bakery Cuchifrito, For lunch, we had Goat Marrow at Ali’s Roti Shop in the Bronx, and for dinner, we had a whole roast goat at Xochimilco. I mean, I’m talking Eyeballs, cheeks, stomach, brains. It was nuts. The Baron is not a character – it’s his way of life. He’s an incredibly generous and cool guy.

7. What’s your next project?

I am working on a pilot to pitch to a production company and trying to figure out to record TV to my MacBook, but I can’t tell you more than that right now. I was selected to judge a contest and I was flown out to Chicago for the Sears Chef Challenge; I won a dream kitchen suite from Kenmore with that, but I don’t have a kitchen! It kills me to have to sell all these beautiful appliances, but I’m going to get a professional video camera and some lighting (and take a photography class or two) so I can get better at my craft. I’m also going to be taking some improv classes to think better on my feet and be more comfortable in front of the camera.